AfriGeneas Africa Research ForumForum Manager: Theresa Cherry

AFRICA. The continent that gave birth to all humanity. African people on the continent today make up over 12% of the world's population.
Contemporary Africa is comprised of 54 nations and over 1,000
linguistic/cultural groups - more languages than are spoken on any other
continent. Of these, about 50 have 500,000 or more speakers. To give an example
of the diversity -a large country like Nigeria, with a population of over
127 million has more than 200 ethnic groups, and 4 major linguistic
groups: Hausa and Fulani in north, Yoruba in southwest, and Igbo in
southeast.

The Sahara desert divides the continent. To the north are Arabic peoples
and Berbers, including the Tuaregs. Sub-Saharan Africa is occupied by
diverse ethnic groups like the Fulani, Yoruba, Ashanti, Igbo, Kongo,
Zulu, Akan, Masai, and Hausa. Nilotic peoples like the Amhara, and
Oromo occupy the North Eastern Horn (Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea). There
are also islands off the African coast, the largest of which is
Madagascar.

Most of the Africans kidnapped and brought to the New World during the
era of the slave trade came from Central and West Africa - with the
largest group of slaves going to Brazil.

The US census bureau lists 558,000 persons born in Africa currently
living in the US, but this figure is low and being debated due to
problems with data collection the figure is probably closer to one
million.

Note: Please
follow the link(s) on the navigation bar below to search additional messages that have been archived to conserve space. If no link is
visible, no messages have been archived on this board.